


Invisible

by Sophia_Bee



Series: X-men Canon Compliant Fics [5]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Anonymous Sex, BAMF Erik, Calm Down Erik, Canon Compliant, Dark, Holocaust, M/M, Nazis, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 11:17:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2505821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik's entire world is about vengeance until he's pulled from the water in Miami by someone calling himself Charles Xavier who tells him he's not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Невидимый](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255317) by [magneto_was_left](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magneto_was_left/pseuds/magneto_was_left), [Sophia_Bee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee)



> a VERY canon one-shot, Erik POV. I filled in some back story for Erik from the liberation of the camps to the events of XMFC. Inspired by the moment that Erik and Charles encounter each other and the idea that this is pivotal for Erik, who feels an instant connection which changes everything for him.

Erik is invisible.

Sometimes when Schmidt comes to get him, dragging him out of the cement hole in the ground where they keep him when he wasn't in the "lab", what Schmidt calls his torture chamber, an attempt to make the work he does sound partially legitimate, Erik pretends he didn't exist. He crouched in the corner, shivering and dirty and thinks himself, 'I am invisible.' After some time he starts to believe it is true. After all, no one meets his eyes as he's escorted to the lab. They don't even give him the dignity of looking away at the strange, emaciated boy. It's like he doesn't exist, and although he sometimes spends some nights poking at his thighs and arms over and over again, digging his fingers into wasted flesh that barely covers bone and feeling the pain, Erik starts to think he actually might not exist and that he might be a fragment of Schmidt's twisted imagination.

If this were so then the camp being liberated, ripped open, all of it's gore and smell spilling out for the world to see, and Schmidt escaping just hours before the tanks roll in with hard eyed soldiers perched on top of them and the more soft eyed vomiting down the mud covered sides of the great metal beasts, means Erik should not be left abandoned and alone. But he is. He's entirely alone, a shaking skeletal boy who is thrumming from all the metal that suddenly surrounds him.

Erik still feels invisible.

He becomes a refugee, a man-child without a home, and although he's still young, there is no boy left. Schmidt has burned and squeezed and shocked that out if him. He wanders the streets of various Eastern European cities, sleeping under awnings and in doorways, doing odd jobs or stealing to survive, using his powers to float coins out of pockets of strangers on the train. He sits in parks watching children play games, tossing balls and bottle caps, marbles piled within circles drawn in the dirt with sticks, screeches of laughter. Erik burns for all he's lost. The anger builds, stacking up on itself until it's the only thing he has left.

The years pass by.

It's in one of these gray, war ravaged Eastern European cities that Erik first sees him. Erik is sitting in a cafe smoking a cigarette and waiting out the rain. He's not the ragged boy who had wandered the streets for years anymore. He's grown, and he no longer has the wirey physique of a starving child but the strength of someone who works hard for a living, the calloused hands of someone who lives on manual labor. He has enough money to last until the end of the month and a cheap room in a rundown boarding house. He's wearing a plain long-sleeved shirt, collar buttoned up all the way and the scowl in his face insures no one will sit next to him as he drinks the strong, bitter coffee sitting in front of him.

He likes places like this. They remind him of before the ghetto, when he lived in a neighborhood where people mingled in the local cafe and old men played chess on tables set up outside and Erik clung to mama's hand and begged her to buy him just one piece of flakey, buttery rugula. Erik takes another drink if coffee.

The bell above the cafe door tinkles, announcing another customer has come to escape the rain. Erik glances up just in time to see a man duck through the doorway, his hat dark with rain, his coat dripping. He glances over at Erik, giving him a smile that shows too much of his gums, then goes to the counter to place an order.

Erik goes cold. He knows that smile.

He was a commander at the camp. One of the less overtly cruel ones. His form of cruelty was disinterest. Erik remembers how he would watch as people were beat, as dogs were unleashed, that smile spread across his face, like he was watching sports on a Sunday afternoon. Erik's hands clench and unclench as he watches this man smile at the woman behind the counter with strange kindness, take a pastry on a plate and cross the room to sit at a table. Erik does not look at him, just stares out the rain streaked window, his whole body quivering with rage.

A younger Erik might have stood up and pummeled the man, might have broken the ceramic cup, splattering coffee all over the table, then tried to slit his throat with a shard. But it’s been ten years and Erik hasn’t survived this long without learning to temper his rage with just a little bit of reason. Enough to make him even more deadly. He sits, waiting, tapping his fingers across the tiles of table, one after the other, mesmerized with the motion, waiting until the man leaves. He bides his time as the man eats his pastry and reads the paper, then gets a cup of coffee and drains that. Finally the man gets up, says something to the woman behind the counter, who laughs, and walks out of the cafe.

Erik counts to himself. One, two, three. He keeps counting, and when he gets to ten he stands quickly and follows the man out the door. He spies him down the block, not very far away, walking at a brisk pace as if he is desperate to get out of the rain.

When Erik was liberated he stopped using his powers. That’s not entirely true. He stopped using his powers in the way Schmidt had been training him to, as a weapon, as a force of destruction. For the last ten years he’d used them mostly to float spare change out of pockets when he was hungry and desperate to eat, or entertain children at the park until their parents grabbed them and dragged them off, telling them to stay away the strange young man. Although Erik could sometimes feel the metal vibrating around him, he has never reached out, never used it in the way he had been trained.

Until today.

When the man stops at a nice looking building and goes through the door, Erik stays across the street, watching him through the pouring rain, collar up to protect him from the rain, hat pulled down, leaving his whole face deep in shadow. The sky is growing darker as the sun begins to slip down towards the horizon, and Erik sees lights go on, initially on the first floor, the upstairs after that.

It’s a pleasant looking house, nicely painted, with plants hanging on each side of the front door. It looks like the place a nice family might live, and Erik imagines children bursting out its front door, running down the street, calling out to go to the park, or to visit the local shop for candy. The dark rage inside him grows even fouler and he thinks about how many children, how many of his people, have gone up in smoke, their futures stolen by men like this one, who is still walking around, still living when so many are dead

Erik hasn’t used his powers for much until this day.

As night falls Erik hunches further into his worn work coat. Even though no one will recognize this drifter, something about what has entered into his mind leaves Erik wanting anonymity. The front door is easy, a simple flick of his powers to make the lock open, and he’s inside. He hears music drifting from one of the rooms upstairs and recognizes it. It’s a german composer, a song popular before the war. Erik creeps up the stairs, softly, with only the faintest creaking, then into the upstairs hallway where one doorway is spilling light into the darkness. That is where he is. The music is louder as Erik approaches and he finally finds himself standing in the doorway of what appears to be a study, looking at the man from the cafe. He is sitting in a chair, a glass in his hand, staring out the window where Erik can see the lights of the city struggling to shine through the rain.

“I know who you are.” Erik says, and the man jumps out of his chair, turning all at once, and Erik knows that while he knows this man, this man will not know him. He was no one special. He was just more of what the Nazis called the Jewish problem. He was invisible to people like this.

“Mein gott,” the man manages to gasp just before the fire poker sitting in the fireplace levitates and swiftly makes it’s way across the room pushing the man backwards and pinning him against the wall. It's the most convenient weapon he can find.

“I know what you did,” Erik says quietly, advancing across the room step by step. He concentrates and manages to bend the fire poker until it’s stretched across the man’s neck, both ends embedded into the wall, and slowly, carefully, Erik pushes, and pushes and pushes. The man brings his hands up and grasps at the iron that is slowly crushing his windpipe, fingers clawing at it as he watches Erik, and it’s to his benefit that he does not beg, just watches Erik, eyes bulging, face turning blue. If he had begged, Erik would have found something else to sick through his hands, leaving him spread out as if crucified on the wall. Finally the man goes limp, lifeless, and Erik feels a surge of exhaustion as his powers wane and his concentration slips.

Schmidt would have been proud. This is exactly what he was trying to accomplish in his lab. The thought makes Erik feel slightly ill. He’s become the killer he was being formed into.

Erik ransacks the house, going through drawers, looking for anything he can take, he pushes aside paintings tears apart closets and in the back of a guest closet on the third floor he finds the safe. It’s easy to unlock. Well, it’s easy to just melt the door and access the contents, and inside he finds a great deal of gold bars, all stamped with insignia of the Third Reich. Erik goes cold. He’s not staring at bars of gold. He’s staring at rings and watches and fillings, all melted down. He’s staring at the blood of his people. Erik’s cheeks are wet.

At first he wants to throw it in the river that runs through the city. He wants it to sink into the silt at the bottom, buried for no one to ever find. Then he changes his mind. He will use this opportunity. He will take this gold and it will help him do what he now knows he must. One life is not enough to pay the debt owed to his people.

Erik is invisible.

After killing the man from the cafe, he has enough money from the items he finds in the home to stop renting cheap rooms, and he buys nice clothes and starts to move through the world on the upper echelon, no longer sleeping in doorways, no longer doing manual labor. He has stolen back enough to fund himself and he starts moving from city to city, hunting down those who have taken millions of lives, and ending theirs. 

Erik chases down his demons one by one until he has vanquished them all. Minus one.

Schmidt.  
  
Shaw now.

He finds him in Argentina. Well, not the man himself, but his picture. He’s smiling out at Erik, that same smile he would give Erik when he was pleased with him, muttering ‘mein kleiner Junge’, under his breath and pushing a piece of chocolate towards him. Erik learned not to take the chocolate because they barely fed him and the rich, sweet candy would give terrible stomach cramps. Even now the mere smell of chocolate produces an almost visceral reaction, leaving Erik’s skin crawling. How terrible, to offer a starving boy food that only makes him sick.

Erik leaves the crumpled, lifeless bodies of the Nazis in the pub and catches the next plane to the States. He’s going to Miami. He’s going to kill his tormenter. He has revenged countless, faceless people who are now just the dust of humanity, blowing across Europe in the form of ashes and smoke. Now he will seek vengeance for himself. For the scared boy who just wanted his parents back. For every torment, every burn, every scar on his skin. For his mother, who could only tell him that everything was going to be fine as she stared into the face of death. Alles gut. It is finally his time. Erik fingers the coin in his pocket, it’s edges warm from his fingers and worn smooth.

Miami is hot. Erik’s skin is sticky from the heat and he briefly hates that he always wear longs sleeves, but then he remembers the scars and it is not hard to resist the urge to push them up his forearms. Erik checks into a hotel and spends most of his time in his room. The Caspartina is not docked, but all it takes is smiling and some charm for the girl who works at the desk in the marina to find out that it will return in a week. For the first time in years Shaw is so close and Erik can almost taste the revenge, a bitter, metallic tang on his tongue, almost the like the taste of blood that would fill his mouth after Shaw would have one of the guards send his thick fist across Erik’s jaw on the rare occasion that he refused Shaw’s request.

He is restless, crawling out of his skin and he feels like he’s going to fly into two. Being so close to what he’s been looking for is making Erik feel like he’s standing on the edge of insanity and he can’t stand the waiting and the tension. Erik doesn’t sleep much, pacing across the soft carpet of his hotel room into the night, looking out the window at the bright lights of the city. He can’t stop feeling the coin in his pocket and Shaw is calling out to him, taunting him.

_I know you, meine kleinen Jungen. I made you._

Finally, Erik leaves the hotel, goes to the bar, sits on the fake leather stool, brooding over scotch on the rocks as a woman with blonde hair and big breasts watches him from the other end, sipping her martini suggestively. Erik looks the other way. She is soft and pliable but there is nothing she can offer him. She is not what he wants.

Erik drains his drink and slams the glass down on the bar. The bartender asks if he wants another and Erik shakes his head, he needs something more than alcohol to quell this unease. He stands up and walks out of the bar, through the lobby and out into the Miami night.

The air outside is hot and sultry, the kind of night when clothing feels like too much, sticking to your skin. There are people everywhere, wandering, looking for respite from the heat. Erik walks down the streets, everything about him feeling sharp and on-point, not meeting anyone’s eyes, wandering until he finds what he’s looking for. The part of town no one talks about, where men go when they tell their wives they are working late and vacant boys in tight jeans with pinpoint pupils and kohl around their eyes lean against walls, beckoning passers bye into the alley for a quick, cheap blow job. Erik stops at the entrance of a bar called The Black Cat then ducks inside. He slides up to the bar and orders another scotch, then sits, sipping the alcohol slowly, enjoying the way it burns down his throat. He doesn’t want to get drunk. Erik doesn’t ever drink to excess. He just wants to take the edge off.

A man walks up to the bar and orders a beer, then he slouches next to Erik, inviting, and Erik glances over at him. He’s slim, wearing a button-up shirt with the first few buttons undone, his hair is cut short and neat and his shirtsleeve are rolled up to reveal muscular forearms. Erik looks at his hands, gripping the bottle of beer and sees they are slim with long fingers, and he feels a familiar tingle in his cock. Yessssss, his mind hisses at a reptilian level. This is what he wants. The stranger take a swallow of his beer, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, then looks over to see Erik watching him. His eyes travel up and down Erik’s body and his tongue emerges to lick across his lower lip. He leans towards Erik, closer, until his mouth is close to Erik’s ear, then he whispers,

“Want to fuck?”

Erik swallows and nods. He needs this, needs the release it will bring, and then maybe he can quell the uneasiness that has lodged deep inside him as he stands on the brink of what might be the biggest moment of his life.

They end up in alley behind the bar. The other man leans in, tries to kiss Erik, but Erik turns his head away. Kissing is intimate and this moment is not about intimacy. Erik puts his hands on the man's shoulders and turns him around, and the other man understands what is happening because he undoes his pants then braces himself against the rough stucco wall, his pants pooling around his feet, and hangs his head down, his breathing is audible, and he is waiting. Erik unzips his pants, pulls out his cock out of his boxers, then pushes them both down and leans his weight against the other man’s back, rutting up against the cleft of his bare buttocks until his cock is hard and leaking precum and the stranger is moaning in a low, desperate hum, begging Erik to fuck him now. Erik spits into his hands, slicks his cock with spit and precum and mutters darkly into the other man’s ear to spread his legs wider. Erik positions himself and he can almost taste his own anticipation, the he pushes in with a deep grunt, grips those narrow hips, and fucks a man he’ll never see again so hard that he’s pushed up against the wall and making choked moaning sounds muffled even with Erik’s hand across his mouth. It’s dirty and fast, but it’s what Erik needs and if there’s anything Erik has learned since leaving the camps, it’s that he’ll always take what he needs.

When they are done the other man turns and leans against the wall, gazing at him through satisfied, hooded eyes.

“Maybe I’ll see you again,” he says, using a handkerchief to clean himself then pulling up his pants.

Erik feels the languid afterglow of orgasm and his legs are a bit shaky, but he’s satisfied and his skin isn’t crawling and for a few moments he was able to forget the task ahead of him. But this man in front of him, the one with the imprint of a wedding ring on his left finger, who probably has a wife at home who had left him dinner in the fridge, and who will kiss his children in the morning, bothers Erik with his casualness and for a moment Erik hates him. Erik has never deceived anyone about what he does. He has never lied to a wife or a lover, so what this man does makes the rage that sits below the surface start to bubble up. He contemplates pulling the iron out of his blood, stopping his heart, ending this charade now. The other man watches him, waiting for him to say something agreeable, like sure, they’d see each other, or tell him that he had a great time. Erik just glares at him.   
  
“I don’t think you’ll see me again.” Eriks says, deciding to spare his life. He walks away, down the alleyway and back towards the hotel.

Two more days.

The night Erik has been waiting for arrives. He heads to the marina carrying a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and when he reaches the dock he finds a stock of boxes to duck behind, strips off his turtleneck and slacks, then pulls on the wet suit. He straps a knife to his calf then thinks about how surprised Shaw will be to see him.

He’s not wrong.

Shaw is smooth and sophisticated and still as cruel as Erik remembered, and he thought he was ready for his, but that voice takes him back, and before he can make his move, before he can send the knife flying and make it carve out the heart of the man who tortured him for years, Erik feels an unbearable pain stab through his head. All of the sudden he’s back there, back in the lab, strapped down, and he’s not sure if this is one memory or a composite, but he knows the pain. It’s a kind of pain he hasn’t felt since he was liberated, and Erik screams. Then his mother is there, her head snapping backwards, her brains flying out of the back of her skull, and it’s like he’s living it all over again. Erik is scrambling, grasping for the control that he has cultivated for almost two decades, but it eludes him as he writhes in agony. He wants to cry out for her, for his mother, for all he has lost.

Then he is in the water, confused and shaking, and as the pain in his head subsides, he realizes that the shaking isn’t from fear, or loss, but from pure, unadulterated rage. Shaw is everything, and Erik will not be denied the revenge that is his birthright. If he was brought into the world to become Shaw’s toy, his plaything, than the world owes him this moment.

Summoning up all his power, and it’s not small effort, because it leaves Erik shaking and his heart is beating so fast, and he feels like he's struggling for air, but he will not stop, will not be beaten, and slowly the anchor chain rises from the dark waters, up and up until it’s level with the boat. Feeling the way the metal hums, the way it calls to him, sings a soft song, telling him that it belongs to only him, gives Erik the strength he needs, and with a grunt and wave of his arm he puts everything into pulling that chain through Shaw’s boat. Shaw will not get away. Erik will kill him tonight.

Once again, Erik is outmaneuvered. It’s like the chocolate. He would take it, reaching out with shaking fingers, remembering how his father would buy him sweets at a shop down the street from their house before the entire world decided Erik, a small, frail boy, was the enemy. He is strapped down on the gleaming metal table, remembering the slick, rich melt of the candy against his tongue, and his parents and actually feeling loved, and he wants it so badly that he takes it. But getting what he wants bring pain and cramping and it’s almost like Shaw has a special talent in turning triumph into even more torture.

Now Erik stares as he realizes that he’s again not going to get what he wants. A submarine pulls out from under the yacht and Erik feels the rage envelope him completely and Shaw will NOT be able to escape his retribution, so Erik puts up his hands and starts to try to pull the submarine towards him, his whole body shaking with exertion, and even though the metal still sings to him, he’s not...he’s just not strong enough, and slowly at first, then faster, the connection between him and the metal starts to drag him through the water.

If Eriks ears weren’t roaring with rage and if the water wasn’t rising up around his ears, he might have heard the shouts, of ‘you have to let it go,’ but he can’t hear anything. The submarine starts to descend and Erik feels its pull, and he still follows, not willing to let go. It’s not a conscious decision, but there is no other option but to go with Shaw, and Erik chokes and sputters as he sinks further into the water, but he will not let go. The he’s under water, hands stretched out, dragged along, and his arms are burning with exertion. He’s underwater now, chest aching, but he will not let go.   
  
Erik is invisible. He’s the boy no one sees, kept in a concrete cell where he can’t lie down and he learns to sleep with his body against the rough wall. He’s the man who spends his life in the shadows, hiding and hunting. He’s invisible until one person finally sees him.

He’s going to die. This is the end, and Shaw will escape, but Erik cannot let go. Not when what he’s wanted is so close. His chest aches from holding his breath and it’s not much longer before he’ll have to finally open his mouth and gulp for air but it will only be seawater that fills his lungs and he’ll finally be able to find what could be called peace in death. Then there is a splash in the water behind him and there are arms wrapping around him, pulling at him, stopping him.

Do not stop him. Do not take this from him. Do not…

 

_You can’t. You’ll drown._

 

...the voice is in his head...

 

_You have to let go._

 

...no…

 

_I know what this means to you, but you’re going to die._

 

...I want to die...

 

_Please._

 

...mein gott...

 

_Erik._

 

_Calm your mind._

 

Erik bursts up from the water, sputtering and gasping, the voice still echoing, everything spinning and he blinks to find the person responsible for the voice staring back at him, a man, just a man, soaking wet, panting.

Erik asks how he did that, how did he get into his head, how did he know his name, and the man tells him he is Charles. Charles Xavier, and he is like Erik, and Erik wonders how this could be. No one is like Erik, no one. Doed metal sing to this man too? Does he fuck random men when the demons threaten to take over? Does he know how it feels to watch the light leave a man's eyes? Exactly how is this man like Erik?

Then this bedraggled Charles creature who says he knows Erik when no one does looks at him, really looks at him as if he knows him, then he says the most preposterous thing anyone has ever said to Erik in his entire life,

"You 're not alone."

At first Erik recoils from the lie. If anyone is alone, it's Erik Lehnsherr. Then the strangest thing happens, and just like that something switches on in Erik, something he didn't know he was able to feel. He looks at Charles, taking in the face of the man that has saved him and for the first time in memory all the anger, all the vengeance that had burned so brightly inside him for must of his life, Shaw and what he did, it all pushes aside and something strange bubbles up from a place Erik didn't even know he still had. It's nothing short of amazing, overwhelming, complete and utter...

_Joy._

_Charles._

He's not alone.

 

~fin~

 


End file.
